Valérie Plante is teasing us!

The first thing you see when you enter the newly renovated Montreal City Hall is a veiled woman.

In the poster greeting “Welcome”, illustrating the diversity of the citizens that make up the city, we have 1 – a young man in a hat, 2 – an old man with glasses and 3 – a woman … Islamic veil , who hides her body under a loose dress over her trousers.

Is the only representative of a willing Montreal citizen in the eyes of the Plante administration wearing a fancy religious symbol?

Have we removed the cross in 2019 and replaced it with a different religious symbol in 2024?

An ordinary museum

After five years of renovations that cost $211 million (no typos, $211 million), City Hall reopened in early June. “Citizens are now invited to “take ownership” of City Hall,” declared Valerie Plante. This is what I decided to do last Friday.

I wanted to take a closer look at the “museum space with permanent exhibition” we were promised. With 211 million jobs, I expected something huge. I found brown and white Plexiglas cubes containing Lego figurines that tell the history of the city. La-men-ta-ble!

But the contrast between the veiled woman in the poster at the reception and the rest of the entrance hall is quite striking.

In a section called “Religious Montreal,” the crucifix that adorned the city hall was placed under a cube.

The cross is taken out through the back door, but the veil is brought in through the front door.

On the cover of “Montreal Secularism,” Montreal was founded by a “pious people” and was “a city of a hundred steeples,” but “after the Quiet Revolution,” “religion was more important in the private sphere.

In the “Symbols” box, we are told that the symbol of the cross was “questioned by the community” in 2002, and was withdrawn in 2019 following the Quebec government’s adoption of a law on secularism.

On the “Pioneers” cover, it is said that “the evolution of attitudes” and “the outcome of women’s struggles” led to the election of Valerie Plante. And we’re devoting an entire section to the “views of Montrealers” who managed to take their place.

How can we both extol the virtues of feminism and secularism and present ourselves with a model of citizenship that is neither secular nor feminist?

Where are the girls?

Last week, the Secular Movement issued a statement “condemning the lack of imagination, creativity and respect for the law, where diversity is only known by a heterosexual religious identity”.

I ask Valerie Plante a question: how can you celebrate the “visibility” of women on the one hand, and on the other hand, on the contrary, destroy them and glorify a symbol of invisibility (the veil)?